Category: Gender
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My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi
Rating: 4/5 Warning: This review contains spoilers. Warning: This book may trigger those with depression and other mental illnesses. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is a graphic novel memoir about a woman in her late 20s whose life is stymied by clinical depression, sexual repression, and her parents’ and society’s expectations. Driven to the end…
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Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh
Rating: 4/5, good This book surprised me more than anything I’ve read in a long time. I came in expecting a grim, feminist narrative about a girl growing up in a small town, overcoming adversity, and coming into her own, and what I got was an extremely dark, gritty story about a young girl’s depressing…
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Who Fears Death By Nnedi Okorafor
Rating: 3/5, average Who Fears Death is a science fantasy novel by Nnedi Okorafor, PhD, a Nigerian-American writer and creative writing instructor. Who Fears Death has been optioned for an HBO show directed by George R.R. Martin. I’ve been hearing a lot of hype about this book. I’ve been following Nnedi Okorafor on Twitter since…
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The Vegetarian by Han Kang
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Rating: 5/5, excellent Have you ever felt like a book was written specifically for you? That’s how I felt reading Han Kang’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Vegetarian. I’ve been a vegetarian on and off over the years, and depressed sometimes, and I feel a kinship with Yeong-hye, the protagonist of this book. Yeong-hye…
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Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality by William Wright
Rating: 4/5, good I picked this book up thinking it would be about the science of genes, behavior, and personality, but it’s really more about the history and politics of the field called behavioral genetics. It doesn’t answer the question, “How much are we controlled by genes, how much by environment, and how much by…
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Is Lady Bird Plagiarized?
Last week, my sister-in-law posted an article by one of her creative writing teachers alleging that the hot indie movie Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Saoirse Ronan, is “a white-lady Real Women Have Curves”. Michelle Cruz Gonzales says that it steals the plot, some scenes, and its cinematography style from the 2002 film…
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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Rating: 4/5 I tried to read The Bell Jar in high school, but didn’t get very far. I had just finished reading (and loved) Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, and so I thought I would like The Bell Jar, but I couldn’t get into it. I couldn’t understand what made a person like Esther Greenwood…
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Dawn by Octavia Butler
Rating: 4 Warning: this review contains spoilers! The other characters withhold a lot of information from the main character, so discussing the themes of this book is really difficult to do without spoiling it. I’m just not going to bother here, and assume you’ve either read the book or don’t care about spoilers. Octavia Butler’s…
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Oreo by Fran Ross
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Book Title: Oreo Author: Fran Ross Year Published: Originally 1974, reprinted in 2015 Publisher: New Directions Pagecount: 240 Rating: 4/5 It’s witty, dirty, socially smart and a little bit visionary, but no one’s heard of it. At least until now… Oreo didn’t get a lot of attention when it was first published in 1974 by…
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2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Book Title: 2312 Author: Kim Stanley Robinson Year Published: 2012 Publisher: Hachette (Orbit imprint) Awards: Nebula Pagecount: 657 Rating: 3/5 Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the biggest names in science fiction. He’s written three trilogies (the Three Californias trilogy, the Mars trilogy, and the Science in the Capital series) and nine stand-alone novels. I…